Good luck with that... I believe there has only been on non-institutional trade in CDS ever - it was done after months of paper work (the guy who wanted to trade had several hundred million in liquid assets)....

An easy way for investors to profit from widened spreads is to short Primus Guaranty (PRS;NYSE), which sells credit default swaps on single-name corporate bonds. The company must mark its investment book to market each quarter, and now has negative book value because of massive writedowns over the past year.

The stock mostly trades in-line with credit default swaps, which can be measured using the CDX indices from Markit.com. When spreads fall, Primus' stock rallies. But when spreads increase, the stock falls. Since mid-March, the stock has rallied as spreads on investment-grade CDS fell.

Unfortunately I guess there are no options on Primus Guaranty and it has already come down a long way......

Quote from makloda:

From realmoney.com:

An easy way for investors to profit from widened spreads is to short Primus Guaranty (PRS;NYSE), which sells credit default swaps on single-name corporate bonds. The company must mark its investment book to market each quarter, and now has negative book value because of massive writedowns over the past year.

The stock mostly trades in-line with credit default swaps, which can be measured using the CDX indices from Markit.com. When spreads fall, Primus' stock rallies. But when spreads increase, the stock falls. Since mid-March, the stock has rallied as spreads on investment-grade CDS fell.